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Catch-up Replies

Let your assistant answer the customers it had to skip, as soon as it can again.

1 Reply to customers missed during a billing pause. 2 How far back to catch up. Screenshot taken 10 November 2026.

Overview

Your assistant sometimes has to stay quiet: a customer writes outside its AI hours, or the assistant is paused because a payment failed or your credits ran out. Those messages still land in your inbox marked as waiting. Catch-up Replies lets the assistant answer them automatically once the reason is gone, using the normal reply flow and normal credits, and only while the channel still allows a reply (WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger allow 24 hours after the customer's message).

Features

After AI hours open

Off by default. When on, the moment a channel's AI hours open the assistant replies to customers who wrote while it was off and are still waiting for an answer. If your team answered them by hand in the meantime, nothing is sent.

After a billing pause

On by default. If the assistant was paused because a payment failed or credits ran out, it answers the customers it missed as soon as the payment goes through or credits are available again. You get a notification with how many conversations were answered and how many credits were used.

Oldest message to catch up on

Choose how old a waiting message can be for the assistant to still answer it: 1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 hours. The default is 24 hours. Older messages are left for you. WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger don't allow a normal reply more than 24 hours after the customer's message anyway.

What you see in the inbox

A waiting message shows a short note under it, for example "Waiting for AI hours to open". Once the assistant replies, the reply is tagged "Catch-up reply" with how many hours late it was, so your team always knows what happened.

Common tasks

Turn on catch-up after AI hours

About 1 min
  1. In the sidebar, open Agent Flow (called Agent Builder on some accounts), click Settings, then choose Catch-up Replies. If your account also has the Coordinator, pick Chat agent first.
  2. Turn on Answer messages that arrived outside AI hours.
  3. Pick the Oldest message to catch up on, then click Save in the bar at the bottom.

Tips

Catch-up replies read the whole conversation first, so they answer the actual question, not just a greeting.
Every catch-up reply uses credits like a normal reply. After a long pause the first run can answer many conversations at once; the notification tells you the total.

Frequently asked questions

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